In general, contemporary monitoring devices have built in self-protection to prevent immediate damage to mechanical machinery, bearing components, and/or control electronics coupled to the contemporary monitoring devices. This self-protection is a reactive mechanism that, when triggered, stops the mechanical machinery to prevent catastrophic damage and to allow repair. This method of operation is called ‘run to failure’. The machine can often be shut down without warning at any time. The repairs may need to be completed on overtime or take an extended time if spare parts are not available. Because this self-protection is costly and disruptive to the end user, contemporary online monitoring is utilized to process and monitor analog sensor data from sensors on the mechanical machinery to prevent reactive failures.
Particularly, the contemporary online monitoring produces event capture data from analog sensor data. The event capture data is then stored on a database to await post analysis. With contemporary online monitoring, preventative actions are taken based on the output of the post analysis.
Due to the nature of the mechanical machinery and the analog sensor data, the contemporary devices must utilize specialized hardware to perform the conditioning. Specialized hardware is a very use specific solution that is expensive to replace, upgrade, and/or maintain.